Grooming appliances include for example hair-grooming appliances, such as electric shavers, hair-clippers and epilators, having an electric hair-grooming mechanism in the form of a shaving mechanism, hair-clipping mechanism or epilating mechanism, respectively, with the mechanism being operated by an electric motor. The rotor of the motor is mechanically coupled to the grooming mechanism (directly or indirectly), so that when the motor is energized, the rotor rotates and thus causes the grooming mechanism to move in the manner by which it performs its respective function (such as to shave, clip or epilate hair).
Traditionally grooming appliances had no means of outputting information to a user. Nowadays, there is a desire to allow the grooming device to interact with the user. However, typically grooming appliances still have a limited user interface display functionality and/or limited data processing functionality, if any. Therefore in some appliances, a feature may be added whereby the user interaction and/or the processing can be offloaded to a more powerful and/or better-equipped device in the form of an external user terminal, such as a smartphone, tablet or laptop computer. E.g. a shaver does not have the processor power that a data processing device such as a smartphone has, or a hair-clipper does not have the display and user interaction possibilities that a tablet or laptop computer has. Thus by connecting the grooming appliance to a user terminal such as a smart phone, tablet or laptop computer, the user interface display functionality and/or data processing capacity can be enhanced.
To enable the user terminal to provide such enhanced functionality requires some form of connection between the grooming appliance and the user terminal, in order to transmit data between the grooming appliance and the user terminal (at least in the direction from the grooming appliance to the user terminal). This may be implemented by either a cable connection or a wireless connection. Such a connection typically requires specific additional components to be included in the grooming device, such as a cable, a connector, an infrared transceiver, or a Wi-Fi-module or other such RF antenna and front-end.
Patent application publication document EP 2 555 474 A2 discloses a home appliance having a separate sound module for generating coded sound messages and a home appliance diagnostic system capable of deconding such sound messages.